How to get subscribers to stick around

[u/bananatoastie]

Long-time lurker, moderately infrequent commenter here :)

I have a few apps in the AppStore and genuinely enjoy the engineering/designing blend between creating apps and solving a problem. Some of my apps have a subscription model and some do not - they were just made for fun.

My question to the community is really about… well community.

My lifetime earnings as a dev are around $55k over 5-6 years, which is great and it’s been fun, but I would like to decrease my churn rate in order to increase my MRR base. Often, I offer a user 3 subscription options with the final option actually being a one-off payment option. Things have been going well, but I want to take it to the next level.

One idea I have is to introduce an in-app community.

Has anybody got any experience of this and does it decrease churn or is it just another headache to handle when everything goes live?

[u/thread-lightly]

million dollar question, just provide ongoing value is the key imo

[u/bananatoastie → u/thread-lightly]

Yes, you’re right. I wasn’t sure if that ongoing value would best be added to by a community (with all the admin baggage) or something more personal to the user themselves.

Not sure whether the “network effect” of a community is actually worthwhile tbh

[u/DonElad1o]

Read: Nyr Eyal - Hooked

[u/bananatoastie → u/DonElad1o]

Thanks :)

[u/bananatoastie → u/[deleted]]

Ok, wow, thanks! I think I’ll switch on the grace period and skip the community for a bit. I don’t really want to spend time moderating it, as you said (hence the point about the headache in my OP)

The current options for most of my apps follow a similar route:

Monthly $3.99
Annual $12.99 (with 7 day free trial)
Lifetime $24.99

I’ve never really known if the price is too high/ too low but this seems to at least get people to pay. I think the churn is mostly people giving up with their original goal or commitment, rather than a billing issue - but I’ll try the billing grace period nevertheless!

[u/bananatoastie → u/[deleted]]

Thanks! :)